Facebook has added security firm Kaspersky Lab to its roster of antivirus companies protecting its users from malicious software, the social media site has announced.
In a blog post by Facebook Security, the company said it is keeping users’ computers safe just by using Facebook, in the way that Kaspersky Lab, together with the likes of ESET, F-Secure and Trend Micro, runs a clean-up tool in the background while you use the social network.
If a person logs on to Facebook via an infected machine, it gets scanned and the user gets notified once the scan is complete to see what it found.
"In the past three months, Kaspersky Lab helped us protect more than 260,000 people accessing Facebook from malware", Facebook said.
Facebook says that in the past three months, thanks to the collaboration of these companies, it has helped clean up more than two million people’s computers that it detected were infected with malware. It says it avoids the "whack-a-mole" approach and instead systematically combats malicious activity and does away with whole clusters of bad links at a time.
"This strategy works well, but to make an even greater impact, we begin a few steps earlier and help fix compromised computers when they connect to Facebook", it says in the blog post. "We use a combination of signals to help find infections and get the malware off of your computer for good, even if the malware isn’t actively spreading spam or harmful links".
Being used by more than a billion people worldwide, Facebook is among the top targets of hackers wanting to spread malware.
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